Mayor Gavin Newsom and his homeless Czar Dariyush Kayhan have opened several new successful supportive housing buildings including this one at 149 Mason Streets at Ellis in San Francisco that will soon open it's doors to the public. Tuesday Feb. 23, 2010.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his homeless Czar Dariyush Kayhan have...

Image 2 of 3

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his homeless Czar Dariyush Kayhan have opened several new successful supportive housing buildings including this one at 149 Mason Streets at Ellis in San Francisco that will soon open it's doors to the public. Tuesday Feb. 23, 2010.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his homeless Czar Dariyush Kayhan have...

Image 3 of 3

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his homeless Czar Dariyush Kayhan have opened several new successful supportive housing buildings including the Zygmunt Arendt House at 850 Broderick in San Francisco that is exclusive to Senior Citizens, Tuesday Feb. 23, 2010.

One month into his first term, Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed former Supervisor Angela Alioto to lead a team charged with a daunting task: crafting a plan to end the city's seemingly intractable homeless problem in 10 years.

The plan was implemented in the summer of 2004 with the goal of finding permanent housing with services for 3,000 of the city's most hard-core, in-your-face people living on the streets.

Just over halfway into the 10 years, Newsom today will announce his administration is right on pace, having housed 1,679 formerly homeless single adults.

Considering the city has been coping with big deficits during most of those years, staying on track is worth celebrating, said Dariush Kayhan, the mayor's homeless czar.

"We're well over the halfway point of getting to the 3,000 units, and that's a big deal," he said. "We know it's the solution, and we're really proud of what we've done so far."

The idea was to end the reliance on short-term shelters by offering converted hotel rooms - half leased by the city and half run by nonprofits - to homeless people along with access to drug and alcohol treatment and mental health care.

Kayhan said the strategy is not only humane, but also a big money-saver because mentally ill or addicted homeless people use a huge portion of city dollars in frequent trips to the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital.

Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said that she's pleased Newsom has focused on creating permanent housing for single adults, but that there's been "a huge neglect" of homeless families and children.

She said that there's a nine-month wait list for homeless families to access shelters in San Francisco and that the school district now serves 2,000 homeless children.

She said homeless families are easy for politicians to ignore because they're more hidden and not as likely to irritate other city residents and tourists.

"They're staying with other families, they're staying in hotels, they're staying in cars," she said. "They're simply not visible."

Since the summer of 2004, 183 permanent housing units have been built for families, Kayhan said. But he added that Newsom has implemented other programs to help them, such as funding rental subsidies.

City residents often say they're not seeing the payoff of Newsom's homeless programs because they still witness aggressive panhandling and other unsavory behavior on the streets every day.

Kayhan said that most of those people are housed, but that the city needs to step up its efforts to provide them services so they can truly live off the streets.

"I call it Homeless 2.0," he said. "They're housed, and now we need to help them get jobs and get stable and get sober."

Alioto said that 94 percent of those housed have remained housed, but that there's a desperate need for more mental health funding from the state and federal government.

"That support has to be there to make this work," she said.

Newsom is scheduled to announce how many people have been housed today at the 33rd Project Homeless Connect, the bimonthly one-stop shop for homeless people to access services.

For the first time, free mammograms will be offered. Also new is Project Homeless Connect's participation in Disney's program to give volunteers a free ticket to one of its theme parks. Perhaps spurred by the incentive, 800 volunteers have signed up to help - up from an average of 500.

One of the beneficiaries of Newsom's 10-year plan is Abdalla Megahed, 68, who was homeless for six years before moving into a permanent unit on Polk Street about 18 months ago.